Recently, a new Linux distribution caught my attention, and I’ll admit the main reason was its bold choice of desktop environment. It’s one of the first distros built entirely around the new COSMIC desktop. I’m talking about Origami Linux.

Before going any further, though, an important clarification is needed: this is a young project and still very much experimental. As a result, not everything is guaranteed to work perfectly just yet. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what you can expect from this new kid on the block.

The distro is yet another attempt at immutability, built on Fedora Atomic, using rpm-ostree for system management. The project adopts an image-based design in which the base system is read-only and updated atomically. In other words, instead of modifying system files in place, updates create new system deployments that are applied on reboot, while previous deployments are preserved and can be selected for rollback.